IBM unveils mobile plans

The suits at IBM want to show that they are still with it and can still strut their funky stuff with the younger generation who are apparently interested in all of this mobile malarkey.

Being IBM, of course, it has formed a committee with suits with job titles that are longer than War and Peace to create a business process with a few flow charts.

According to the company, Biggish Blue wants to create a foundation to help clients secure and manage devices, and develop and integrate mobile applications.

In other words, while most companies are trying to make mobile sound cool, IBM has made it as exciting as Blackpool on a rainy Sunday afternoon. The cunning plan turns out to be middleware, integration and something which will never make an Apple advert.

IBM’s Mobile Foundation, which sounds like a voluntary group to take the elderly out shopping, is a collection of software and services designed to help clients capitalise on mobile computing.

This includes the application development integration tools from Worklight which it bought at the beginning of the year.

Also included is the mobile device management system, Endpoint Manager for Mobile Devices, that was built on technology from BigFix, a company it bought two years ago.

IBM thinks this will sort out all those companies who have rather hip executives who actually want to bring their own devices to work and place them on the network.

Biggish Blue predicts that the mobile computing market is currently worth $22 billion, and will grow to reach $36 billion by 2015. And there must be some truly dull products out there for companies to make it less interesting.